'This Is Not Spam' rates analyzed

No matter how carefully an email campaign is developed and implemented, some messages can still end up in a recipient's spam folder. Email intelligence company, Return Path, has analyzed how often people "rescue" such emails from spam folders, and why.

Most email programs allow users to examine their spam folder before deleting the contents, and provide the ability to "rescue" emails that have inadvertently ended up labeled as spam.

Return Path analyzed how many emails are rescued, known as the This Is Not Spam (TINS) rate. They found that, within a sample of more than one billion messages received during the first quarter of 2013, fewer than two per thousand (0.17%) were rescued from the spam folder.

However, senders whose messages usually reach the inbox 97% of the time, or more, had TINS rates triple that of all other senders (0.44%).

"Senders with high TINS rates share common traits that extend beyond email marketing best practices. They use data-driven intelligence to connect with consumers and study their behavior and make decisions that increase loyalty across all channels," says George Bilbrey, president of Return Path. "Deeper examinations of metrics like TINS offer great examples of how brands can use data to develop more value from email."

Return Path's study, available online, found that brands to which consumers are loyal enough to rescue them from the spam folder include Apple, Netflix, Target, Amazon, Match.com, United Airlines, and Etsy, among others that are listed by category in the study.